Jeffrey Goldberg’s “new authority”:https://crookedtimber.org/2011/06/27/why-is-ireland-such-a-bastion-of-anti-israel-feeling/ on the depths of anti-Israel hatred in Ireland, expands on the topic “in some interesting ways”:http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-theres-never-been-a-safer-time-for-children-2824766.html.

bq. Now in the toxic Post-Catholic Politically-Correct Pseudo-Consensual culture that has emerged in PC3 Ireland, one may be as loudly anti-Semitic as one likes about Israel, even as one makes a great posturing display show of not being “anti-Semitic” in domestic politics. This is Phoney Liberalism at its most unprincipled. Fear of unjustified allegations of anti-Semitism should not prevent us considering some difficult — that is to say, adult — issues that will probably violate all the dogmas of PC3ness.

bq. Here goes. It is now very possible that a state law governing private Catholic sacramental practices will be introduced by a Jewish Minister for Justice. This raises the question of whether it is ever prudent for a member of any minority to introduce laws affecting the private religious practices of the majority. Moreover, is it acceptable to have a rigorously-enforced state law over children and Catholic priests, but not one concerning Jewish babies and rabbis? How, otherwise, would the rabbinical removal of a baby boy’s foreskin, a deed that by definition involves a non-consensual and irreversible injury and which results in a permanent reduction of the sexual-sensitivity of the glans, be allowed under the proposed new child-protection laws? You no doubt find these questions uncomfortable; well, believe me, not nearly as uncomfortable as I do in asking them.

The pivot, in successive paragraphs, from the claim that (a) that everyone else in Ireland is anti-Semitic (b) that only he is willing and able to ask the uncomfortable questions about whether Jews should govern Catholics (and did he mention by the way that the law doesn’t stop them from mutilating baby boys’ todgers?) is remarkable. And this isn’t to mention Myer’s earlier stuff about permanently tumescent African layabouts who have too many children (one senses that Mr. Myers has a thing about penises). I really think that Jeffrey Goldberg needs to publicly reconsider his stated reliance on this particular source. It doesn’t do any favors to his reputation, or that of the magazine he works for.

Update: It turns out that Jeffrey Goldberg “did apologize”:https://twitter.com/#!/Goldberg3000/status/85433001403613185 (but still wants to “stick to his main claim”:https://twitter.com/#!/Goldberg3000/status/86060718855684096_ )via Twitter after seeing the Myers Africa rant.

Update 2: via Paddy in comments, this really quite revolting Myer “meditation”:http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/why-drought-in-somalia-is-not-our-problem-2821058.html from last week on how feeding starving African babies is a bad thing – after all, one day they may turn into Islamist terrorists.

bq. There is another question here — the difficult one, the painful kind that gets people into trouble. It is this: what is the rationale for keeping a particular demographic group alive when the main result is the maintenance of an implacable enmity towards the rescuers? It is that existential argument — not the one that the UN admits to, of aid-material falling into the hands of the Islamists — that we should be discussing.

bq. It’s not easy, to be sure. For immediately we must face a fourth question: who can look at the photograph of a tiny, fading child, with flies supping the last juices from its desiccating eyes, and decide to let her die? And likewise, hundreds of thousands of other such children?

bq. … A Somali you save today is unlikely to turn into a sort of grateful Nilotic-Dane in 20 years. No, indeed: the chances are he will remain a proud and resentful Somali Islamist, and even if he comes to the West — as hundreds of thousands already have — he will probably despise us as backward savages, who are too lazy even to circumcise our little girls the wholesome radical way, as they should be, with rusty blades and no anaesthetic.